Grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) is often used as a versatile tool for the contactless and destruction-free investigation of nano-structured surfaces. However, due to the shallow incidence angles, the footprint of the X-ray beam is significantly elongated, limiting GISAXS to samples with typical target lengths of several millimetres. For many potential applications, the p...

Transurethral lithotripsy (TUL) is a common procedure in urology. However, controversy persists about how to deal with stones pushed up into kidney from the ureter during the procedure of TUL. This study investigated the efficacy of combining flexible ureteroscopy and rigid ureteroscopy for pushed-up stones into kidney during TUL. Fotry-one patients underwent TUL by a single surgeon from July 2...

The discrimination of fluid content and lithology in a reservoir is an important characterization that has a bearing on reservoir development and its management. For the unconventional reservoirs, such as shale gas formations, besides other favorable considerations that are expected of them, it is vital that reservoir zones are brittle. Brittle zones frac better and fracing of shale gas reservo...

Beirut, Sidon and Tyre were major centres of maritime trade from the Bronze Age onwards. This economic prosperity generated increased pressures on the local environment, through urbanization and harbour development. Until now, however, the impact of expanding seaport infrastructure has largely been neglected and there is a paucity of data concerning the environmental stresses caused by these ne...

Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques are being increasingly and effectively used in morphometric analysis and groundwater potentiality mapping of drainage basin owing to its capabilities of manipulation, analysis, flexibility of experimentation and ability to extract topological attributes from various thematic maps, and to work as a unique tool for geospatial modelling. An attempt to...

Introduction: Venus once had substantially more water and possibly even oceans early in its history. Given the close proximity of Venus and Earth, the planets could have accreted comparable amounts of volatiles. The high D/H ratio in the atmosphere of Ve-nus implies an elevated water abundance earlier in the history of Venus [1,2]. This water was lost by mechanisms that may have involved evapor...

A cyclical pattern can be observed in the central sector of the Guadix Basin (southern Spain) in the Late Pliocene-Quaternary alluvial fan deposits prograding into its axial valley. A climatic significance has been attributed to this cyclicity on the basis of sedimentological and preliminary isotopic studies. The progradation phases of the alluvial fans are here attributed to more arid time int...

A small printing company in Johannesburg has experienced a steady decline in profits over the past four years, and wishes to reverse this trend. The objective of this study was to assess the implementation of Lean Manufacturing in that context, and to determine the impact it had on the printing company’s profit margin. A process-mapping of the printing organization was performed; this process-m...

The Sand beds of the Sapele field have been evaluated to ascertain viability for hydrocarbon development using integration structural play and petrophysical indices. Pay sands were delineated quick look approach. A seismic horizon interest was picked a well control measure. reveal three major faults responsible migration entrapment mechanisms which contributed three-way closure in area. Litho-s...

Seismological images represent maps of the earth’s structure. Apparent bandwidth limitation of seismic data prevents successful estimation of transition sharpness by the multiscale wavelet transform. We discuss the application of two recently developed techniques for (non-linear) singularity analysis designed for bandwidth limited data, such as imaged seismic reflectivity. The first method is a...